Libyan government comes to UTL’s rescue, injects $56M

In an effort to revamp Uganda Telecom, the Libyan government has injected $56M into the company which has been facing serious financial problems.

Mohamed Dayri, the Libyan Foreign Affairs minister yesterday disclosed that his government had reached a consensus with the Uganda government to help sort out the financial challenges affecting Utl.

Libya owns 69% of the shares in Utl while the Government of Uganda has 31% shares in stake.

“It is true that Utl, one of the biggest investments we have in Uganda has issues and that is the major purpose for my visit to Uganda,” said Dayri.

Dayri admitted that the challenges affecting UTL and National Housing and Construction Corporation (NHCC), but hastened to add that the Ugandan government had given them a grace period of two months (until August) to sort out the mess.

He revealed that they have injected $72m since 2010 and are going to pump in an additional $56m in the next two months to be in position to compete fairly.

UTL will be playing catch up with other telecos in the country that seem to have established a stronger footprint; MTN Uganda last month established itself as the country’s internet leader, a position that had been held by Orange Uganda (now Africell), as it [MTN Uganda] strives to turn it’s over 10 million voice subscribers into data subscribers.